Tender trap Trilogy 3: 🛄 The Moment I Stopped Seeing a Geisha and Started Seeing a Woman Going to Work. 🇯🇵

My holiday had ended. I was in Kuala Lumpur International Airport, waiting for my flight back to Sydney. Entry #24 was already written. It completed the trilogy neatly.

I did not publish it… 

Narita was still on the departure board across the lounge when I opened my phone. Later, through the glass, I watched a Japan Airlines aircraft push back from the gate, its white body sliding away from the terminal with the quiet efficiency I associate with Japan. I found myself scrolling back to 2018.

It was my first time there. I landed in Tokyo before moving on to Kyoto.

Tokyo did not introduce itself gently.

Shinjuku at night felt unreal, screens stacked on buildings, light layered over light. The crossings moved in disciplined waves, hundreds stepping forward at once, then dispersing without collision. I stood still longer than necessary, watching the crowd step forward and fall apart again, as if the city were rehearsing itself.

What struck me was not just the brightness. It was the restraint beneath it.

Taxi doors opening automatically at the curb. Shop assistants stepping forward to pass receipts with both hands, eyes lowered just enough to signal respect without shrinking. Even in crowded stations, lines formed without instruction. No raised voices. No elbows. A metropolis carrying its volume quietly.

Somewhere in that brightness, I remembered a scene from Lost in Translation.

“Lip my stocking.”

I had laughed when I first saw it. The misfire. Back then I thought I was observing a Western man misplaced inside Tokyo.

Standing there years later, I was not so sure I was outside that lens.

______

Then I boarded the Shinkansen to Kyoto.

The movement south felt physical. Tokyo thinned into suburbs, then fields. Mount Fuji appeared briefly through the window, distant and almost unreal, then low hills. The carriage grew quieter.

By the time we arrived, the air felt older.

Kyoto is wood, stone, and shadow. Low buildings that refuse height. Temple roofs rising beyond narrow streets. Gardens tucked behind sliding doors. Old houses that lean slightly, as if time presses gently against them. The smell of incense drifting from somewhere you cannot quite locate. Tourists everywhere, yes, but the city does not bend toward them. You find yourself walking more slowly. Selfie sticks rising into narrow lanes like thin metal periscopes, searching for something framed.

In Gion, the streets narrow further. Umbrellas tilt. There is performance here, but not for the pavement. The art unfolds inside rooms most people will never enter. Introduction only. Invitation only. The street is not the stage. The room is.

I took hundreds of photographs that week. Temples. Gardens. Old wooden houses. Rain on stone.

Two stayed with me.

In the first, it is daytime. She is crossing a bridge near Sanjo Station, umbrella lowered against the glare. Office workers move around her with the indifference of routine, heading to work, to school, back home. She tries to fold into the ordinary, but the kimono refuses anonymity. Even from behind, even in daylight, she becomes something larger than herself the moment she steps into public space.

____________

Night in Gion. Rain on stone. Phones lifted under the eaves. A geiko in full kimono moving quickly toward a waiting taxi. Her umbrella angled low, her body turned instinctively away from the lens, the way women turn when they do not want to be filmed.

I raised my phone.

The image blurred. Her outline dissolving into wet light.

For a moment I mistook the blur for poetry.

She could have been going anywhere. It would not have mattered. The world had already decided what she represented.

Back then, standing in that rain, I thought I was capturing beauty.

She was not an ornament.

She was not a symbol.

She was going to work.

___________

6 days after landing in Sydney, I walked back into my own rhythm. The city moved around me the way it always does, indifferent to what I had realised. Traffic lights. Coffee queues. Messages. My heels back where they belong.

The room was ready.

So am I.

More images from my trip in Japan, 2018: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DV1WGMEk9TG/?igsh=MXhwMHkxN3doZ3ZuMg==

💝 Tender Trap Trilogy (You’re here: #3 of 3 🇯🇵)

🇲🇾 #1: de-Lulu

🇹🇭 #2: Lub U Rong Time